** – and like the incident with the disappearing player on transfer deadline day, I’m not sure if that’s the kind of thing one should be reading on an official site. This might have been totally innocent, but stuff like that can easily be misconstrued…

Whatever the reason, it worked yesterday. And it needed to, because other results could have made life very uncomfortable.

A poor game? By the sounds of it, it was. We got a penalty, Taylor finally scored one, but our previously reliable defence became anything but that. Then we improved a bit in the second half, and Meades discovered that if you toe-poke into the net you get a goal…

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

OK, we’ll be limping over the line at best this campaign. We’ll more likely crawl over it, and there’s still the possibility we’ll collapse in a heap and get run over for good measure. But we’ve done ourselves a LOT of good with this result.

Not just for our own mental well-being, but for those below (and perhaps above) us right now as well.

We know ourselves the feeling you get when you have a result and the fellow bottom feeders get a better – or worse – one than you. But that will apply to fans of Fleetwood, Oldham and Northampton as well.

Imagine what they were thinking yesterday as our scoreline came in. We may be shit, but so are many others.

Then again, nobody up to Walsall is properly safe right now. Probably Southend are. We’re only one point behind Oxford after all, although some do have games in hand over us.

Yesterday helps, but it still only keeps our head above water.

As it will until late on in this season. Our next four games are Rochdale and Shrewsbury away, Fleetwood at KM, and up to Donny on Easter Monday. It’s perfectly possible that we could absolutely shit the bed again, especially as two of those are below us.

Equally, win next Saturday and on Good Friday, and suddenly life may become a little bit easier.

Right now, as yesterday proved, everything must now be focused on getting results and nothing more. This is not the time to be arsey, or to be clever with tactics, or become complacent. A toe-poke from Meades means as much as a wonderstrike from Taylor, or a Pigott header.

We’ll sort stuff out in the summer. A close season that could be the most fundamental since 2010, when we made the decision to go full time. A brave one, and something that turned out pretty well..

Anyway, apart from the 777 Demolition signs going up outside NPL, it seems that something else is happening with our new home – at least, in Erik Samelson’s programme notes yesterday.

As the club might get a bit arsey at me linking an image of the page up, and they haven’t put anything on the OS yet, I’ll quickly explain – there’s a change in the planning application because (I quote):

“…through design development on the corners on the North South Street are now angled and not radial”.

As a result, it requires resubmitting to LBM, as it’s changing the exterior view of the project. And you can hear the apocalyptic-sounding voiceover already – “they thought they were finally going home. But the corporate planning authorities had other ideas…”

Actually, it’s likely not that big a deal. We’ve got permission to build anyway, and we’ve got time before the site gets cleared before we finally nail down what the stadium will be like – down to the nuts and bolts.

Almost literally.

We’ll have to wait for the application to go in to see why this is being done, and even what is meant by “radial” and “angled”. My guess is that it’s being done for cost, and perhaps practicality – as in, it may make it easier to upgrade a stand at a time.

I don’t doubt things have been discovered that may mean some tweaking – or more. When the s106s got signed and that lovely looking render got published, the people on this construction forum spotted something from that illustration alone.

In itself, a restricted view from presumably the club bar isn’t worth a total revamp, but even little things like that might be hiding more configuration issues that would be more serious. I don’t know, but things like entry/exit you would have to get right.

It’s a very interesting thread to read anyway, and one worth bookmarking for future quiet moments.

It’s probably not likely to be as fundamental a change as what Brentford did last August with Lionel Road, and as said in the programme notes – altering things after planning permission in this way isn’t exactly uncommon.

Besides, I’d rather us get it right before the first bit of concrete goes in. As the old DIY saying goes, measure twice, cut once…